rother, fare ye well,' she said.

As she stood delivering this speech--her head erect, her eyes
flashing angrily at me, her brown fists tightly clenched, I knew that
further resistance would be futile.

'But now I wants to be left alone,' she said.

She bent her head forward in a listening attitude, and I heard her
murmur, 'I knowed it 'ud come ag'in. A Romany sperrit likes to come
up in the evenin' and smell the heather an' see the shinin' stars
come out.'

While she was speaking, she began to move off between the trees. But
she turned, took hold of both my hands, and gazed into my eyes. Then
she moved away again, and I was beginning to follow her. She turned
and said: 'Don't follow me. There ain't no place for ye among the
Romanies. Go the ways o' the Gorgios, Hal Aylwin, an' let Sinfi
Lovell go hern.'

As I leaned against a tree and watched Sinfi striding through the
grass till she passed out of sight, the entire panorama of my life
passed before me.

'She has left me with a blessing after all,' I said; 'my poor Sinfi
has taught me the lesson that he who would fain be cured of the
disease of a wasting sorrow must burn to ashes Memory. He must flee
Memory and never look back.'

VI

And did I flee Memory? When I re-entered the bungalow next day it was
my intention to leave it and Wales at once and for ever, and indeed
to leave England at once--perhaps for ever, in order to escape from
the unmanning effect of the sorrowful brooding which I knew had
become a habit. 'I will now,' I said, 'try the nepenthe that all my
friends in their letters are urging me to try--I will travel. Yes, I
will go to Japan. My late experiences should teach me that Ja'afar's
"Angel of Memory," who refashioned for him his dead wife out of his
own sorrow and tears, did him an ill service. He who would fain be
cured of the disease of a wasting sorrow should try to flee the
"Angel of Memory," and never look back.'

And so fixed was my mind upon travelling that I wrote to several of
my friends, and told them of my intention. But I need scarcely say
that as I urged them to keep the matter secret it was talked about
far and wide. Indeed, as I afterwards found to my cost, there were
paragraphs in the newspapers stating that the eccentric amateur
painter and heir of one branch of the Aylwins had at last gone to
Japan, and that as his deep interest in a certain charming beauty of
an un-English type was proverbial, it was expected that he w